Iran’s weakness: its ports 15, July 2010

There’s a very interesting article written by Meir Javedanfar in The Diplomat discussing a strategic weakness of Iran. Javedanfar notes that Iran’s southern ports are not able to accommodate +100,000 ton ships. [Presumably they don’t have any such ports in the north…] Any larger ships must dock in the UAE are the goods reexported. This is problematic, Javendanfar, suggests for a few reasons.

Given the increase in 250,000 ton ships plying the Gulf, Iran is increasingly losing out on economies of scale.

Relying on another country for transit of such an amount of goods is a dangerous tactic. Particularly given the UAE’s increasing proclivities towards siding with American sanctions, this could well bode ill for Iran.

Iran is paying hundreds of millions of dollars (perhaps billions, he suggests) to the UAE in port fees.